It's My Life

Let me start by saying that Purple Gatorade is easier to throw up than Orange Gatorade. I have been sick for three days straight. I have thrown up so many times that I have lost count. Yesterday when I went to get my Neupogen shot, they doctors office kept me, gave me an IV and pumped fluids and anti-nausea medication into my body. It worked for maybe 3 hours. Then the vomiting returned. I went back this morning and did another round of fluids and anti-nausea medication. This time they used a different drug and I am happy to say at the time of writing this post, I have not been sick since 11:15 this morning. I am hopeful that it is over. I am thankful for my husband. He has taken very good care of me in the past three days. I am also thankful to my Mom, she packed up and drove here quickly to help out and is still here. I am also thankful for Meeghan, she has given me good advice and things to watch for.  I also know many of you have been saying prayers for me, and I am thank...

Tomorrow is my last scheduled chemo session. We meet with the Doctor at 8:15 a.m. I would imagine we will get final instructions on the next steps. Today is a day of preparation. Food needs to be purchased and prepared. Laundry needs to be done. House cleaned. My energy level is low. Not because I feel badly but because I know what awaits me and I am full of dread. My random thought for today....you know how people who use meth get those sores all over them? Well, I have developed sores all over too. Several on my fingers, hands, even my back. I wonder if that is some weird side effect of chemo? I just keep reminding myself that a year from now...this will be a distant memory.

As always, getting disconnected from that pump is a high. I can not even describe the feeling of watching the poison slowly entering your body for two entire days. The near sight of it makes me sick. I slept a lot Wednesday. I guess that is a high. My good girlfriends, Jen and Megs, brought dinner over Wednesday evening. They also gave me the most beautiful quilt made by Jen's mother-in-law, Amy Gronniger. As if the gift of a quilt alone was not enough to make me cry, they turned the quilt over and showed me all the hand prints on the backside of the quilt. Such a thoughtful and special treat! For those readers who are faint at heart (or mention of bodily fluids) you may want to stop reading here!  But for the rest of you, as the title of this post says,there have been some low ones as well. Around 9:30 p.m. I started feeling a little nauseated. That feeling only continued to grow and I can say I have spent the last 15 hours vomiting nonstop. When I went to get th...

I am posting this today for my Aunt Deloris. She likes it when I post daily. I was just very very tired today. I had a hard time waking up. I credit the Benadryl I took last night to counter the steroids. As I type this, at 10:00 p.m. I am still in my jammies! The entire day has been spent resting and napping and carrying around my chemo bag. I get disconnected from the pump tomorrow around 1:00. Tomorrow is my normal transition day. I start the day off feeling very well and end it feeling very horrible. This evening we have a visitor. Momma Liz is here while Daddy David is recovering from surgery.It is nice to talk and catch up and offer a haven to those who need it!

We had a busy weekend. Friday night I got to help my friend Meeghan.  She is presenting at a national conference and we got to go shopping to find her the most perfect outfit. Saturday we hosted a small but fun pre-Halloween party. We were blessed to have no rain so we had a wiener roast in our drive way. The little people in our world, sure looked cute all dressed up! Funny enough, I thought the little people would be scared of the creepy Halloween decorations but to our amusement, they grabbed those fake rats and ran around all night playing with them! I will post photos soon! Of course we had to share the party with the MU/OU football game. We ended up with both fans, who played very well together! And I will say both were gracious with there win/loss. Not to offend Melissa Paige, but it is pretty cool that MU pulled a win out! Sunday, my mother and I baked chicken. Literally, all day long! My in-laws had a church pot luck and they were suppose to bring the main dish. So m...

WOW! This week has blown me away. I hit the two-thirds finished mark when I got the chemo bag disconnected on Wednesday. I know to all of you, four under my belt and two left sounds like a walk in the park, but from where I am sitting, it still sounds like a lifetime. The chemo effects are definitely stronger and more severe, probably why I say two sessions still sounds like a lifetime. I have been super nauseated and major digestive issues. I have lost six pounds since Monday. I credit that to the fact that I can't stand the smell of food, can't stand the taste of it, nor can I really stand to look at it. Today I went to the doctors office to get the Neupogen shot. The nurse almost made me sick when she was flushing my lines with Heparin. So, she insisted I try some IV anti-nausea medication.  They gave me 4 oz. of some medication and it totally changed my world today. I came home, took a nap, and woke up feeling as normal as I have felt in weeks. Even now as I type, I fee...

Today is the day after chemo. I took some Benadryl last night around 9:15 p.m. and never saw 10:00 p.m. This is so much better than the first two doses of chemotherapy when I was up all night. The unfortunate news is that I never even made it to halftime of the Monday Night Football game. The good news, I felt well enough to be at work today. Today at work was one of the most productive days I have had in a long time.  Maybe it was because over half of the office was out of the office or maybe today was just one of those days that I could turn the brain off from thinking about Cancer and just focused on my to-do list.  Oh how I wish I could have more days like today. Food still taste awful. The family ordered pizza for dinner last night and I could hardly eat. I can not even describe what it taste like in words. But it is a huge deterrent to eating. When I started this journey back in August my Doctor told me he did not want me to eat fresh fruits or veggies. And you ...

How fitting that the Doctor used a football analogy today during our appointment.  He basically said that during the first half of a game, the players are fresh and enthusiastic. Every bit of forward progress feeds that enthusiasm and motivates them to keep going. But by second half, the hits hurt, the players are tired, and fatigue sets in. Well folks, I am in the third quarter. The chemo has successfully shrunk my lymph nodes (the doctor could not feel any of them today).  But the chemo is building up in my body and the side effects of chemo will be staying with me longer. I am fatigued. I am nauseated. Food no longer taste like food. (I tried to eat a Twizzler today and had to have Jacob come taste it because it had no taste to me. He declared it just fine.) The scoreboard is in my favor but the next two quarters are going to be the hardest to get through. Other good news from today's appointment, my blood counts are really high. Of course my white count is high, ...

Wow! Yesterday was a busy day that I am sure I will pay for today. I was at the hospital by 9:00 a.m. to get my Neupogen shot. I had a new nurse (I really liked her) who convinced me to try the shot in my belly and not my arm. She said there are way less nerve endings in the belly than the arm and she promised it would be better. I agreed as long as I did not have to see the needle going into my belly. While I was getting the shot and not looking, I was chatting with a young man who was also waiting to get a shot at the outpatient clinic. Apparently, this young man needed a rabies shot because he and his other 20 something friends caught a possum. They played with it for about five hours before one of this young man's friends decided the possum wanted some tequila. What happened next; the young man felt sorry for the possum and tried to clean his face off and the possum was angry enough to bite him. Now, daily rabies shot for him. Needless to say, his story was entertain...

This week has been a tough one. Up to this point, in between treatments I have been able to bounce back to 100% and feel as good and strong as I have ever felt. Feeling strong and "normal" in  between treatments gives me motivation to head right back in there on treatment day and do it all over again. But this past week, I never reached that 100%. At my best I peaked between 75-80%.  Maybe it is because of the cumulative effect of chemotherapy. The more doses I have done, the more poison that is in my system. Or maybe it is the effect of daily Neupogen. I have had 27 shots of Neupogen since my first dose of chemotherapy.  Or maybe it is a fall cold that is plaguing my body. I developed a cough a week ago and it persist. In fact the doctor just prescribed a Z-pac just in case the cough was turning into bronchitis. Most likely it is a combination of all three things with the end result...I am dreading Monday morning.   Monday is dose number 4, the offici...

I am back on ten straight days of Neupogen. I have to go to back to North Kansas City Hospital on the weekends for the shot. Wayne, Olivia and I went to breakfast after the shot hopeful to start a great Saturday off. I love fall and all the fall festivals around town. Today was the Gladstone Gladfest and I had hoped to attend it with my daughter and her Nana. However, I barely made it home before I started getting ill. Some of the digestive health side effects of chemo are so sudden and sharp it can make your head swim. I was able to get a good nap in but when I woke up, the Tylenol had wore off and every joint in my body ached. And here is a new one, I had the chills. Massive chills that I could not recover from. My entire day has been spent in bed, sleeping, recovering, and praying. I am not sure if all of this is chemo related, I know the pain in my joints is from the Neupogen. My throat is also swollen, so maybe I am coming down with a cold?? The other super crappy thing, every o...

I have blogged before about how difficult the start of treatment is because of the giant dose of steroids they give me.  The steroids are one of the supportive drugs that come with chemo to help fight off some of the side effects. While they do not make me eat everything in site, they have kept me awake...ALL NIGHT! The past two rounds I have been up all night and Wayne puts me to bed as he is walking out the door with Jacob and Olivia to go to work in the morning. Last dose I attempted to counter the steroids with Benadryl.  It made me sleepy but I still did not fall asleep. I did get a short power nap from it. I asked the doctor today what would be an appropriate dose to counter the steroids and he said 50 mg. I was so excited with my new plan until I got home and realized that was the NORMAL dose. So after a little consultation with my special girl, I found out how much was considered to be an overdose and decided I would try 75 mg. Maybe it helped that I was sle...

 Me, rockin' it out, at Chemo! Another look for me these days; hats. The Husband gave me this hat this past week. Also check out my new jewels! No, not medical jewels this time. I have a new necklace from Heidi Lou Designs! It is a photo of me and the kids back when I had hair. Me, with my "new Mommy hair." {That is what The Short Chic calls it!} Is it sad that my fake hair is cuter than my real hair? Unfortunately, it is scratchy and hot to wear. Every time I venture out in public wearing it I look forward to getting in my car and pulling it off. Oh how I miss my hair.

I almost lost the PICC line today. Friday I had a dressing change and immediately I felt discomfort. However, the nurse and I agreed it might be because when they pulled the previous dressing off it took a little bit of my skin. So, I wore the new dressing all day Friday. By bedtime Friday, my arm was burning. I ripped off the dressing and I had serious skin irritation, (I would even say skin burns). I put a simple dressing over it and called it good for the remainder of the weekend. Friday night I also seem to have developed a small sore throat. I am sure it is caused by shutting down the air conditioning and opening the windows. I felt stuffy and sore, so we decided it was too big of a risk, so we closed the windows and turned the air back on. I am sure Wayne and I are the only people in Kansas City not enjoying this amazing weather, but it sis just too dangerous to catch a fall cold right now. I went in for my daily injection and showed my arm to the Nurse. She thought my arm ...

I had a lovely visit from my friend Shannon today. She forfeited one of her days off to spend it with me and driving me to my doctor appointment. Thank you, Shannon!!  I was disconnected from the pump this afternoon. This marks my 1/3 of the way through the chemotherapy. The nausea started this morning. I was sitting with Jacob while he was having breakfast and one whiff of his food about made the stomach flip. So I started the anti-nausea medication today. I feel weak. I am trying to implement a new strategy this time around. Last time I avoided eating when I did not feel good. This time I am trying to make sure I eat small amounts of food that are protein packed.  Tomorrow should be the worse day yet. I also start a 10 day injection of more Neuprogen. How am I doing? I am hanging in there. Trying to be as tough as I can be. While at the same time, recognizing that my body is in turmoil right now and can not be pushed. As much as I hate it, I have not been at work this ...

Today, I was home. Once again the steroids have caused another sleepless night. I think I cat napped from 1:30 to 3:00 and was then awake till about 7:00 a.m. The Husband put me to bed at 7:30 when the rest of the family headed out to go about their day. I have managed to sleep off and on all day. Thankfully!  I find the steroids frustrating. I felt good enough to be working today but I was so exhausted from the lack of sleep. I am still attached to the pump, getting my two day dose of the A drug. I will say the new PICC line is much easier to maneuver than the old Groshong. This pump should finish about 12:30 tomorrow and then I will get a dressing change and be finished with it for another week and half. My good friend Jen just called. She has been a saint! She stopped by last week with dinner for the family and her little boy got out of the truck to say hi. He saw the new PICC line and apparently told his Momma when they left my house that he no longer wanted to eat p...

One thing I can tell you about life in Cancer World, every appointment is early in the morning. Mom and I arrived at the Oncologist Office by 8:30 this morning. I had three appointments this morning: Lab, Doctor, and Treatment. I was excited for the Lab appointment because they would be able to take my blood and not have to stick me, thanks to my new Power PICC line. However, the Lab Tech informs me that she does not use the PICC and that she needs to do a finger stick. Total disappointment! While my Doctor is a great doctor and helps lots of people, I think he might have missed his calling as a Host of a Children's Television Show. He is so upbeat and positive. It almost feels exaggerated but you know it is genuine. He informs me that the daily shot of Neuprogen worked, my white blood count was up to from 2,100 to 13,400. The Doctor also confirmed what I could already visually tell; The lumps in my throat is softer and smaller. So, the  medicine as harsh as it is is shrinki...

Today was the first time since I have started Chemo that I had blood taken. My white blood count is 2,100 and considered too low to do treatment. A normal blood count should be 4,600 to 10,000. So after only one round I am way below the norm. The rest of the counts were all good. A low white blood count puts me at risk for an infection. So, I am on high alert. I have to avoid large public places as well as people who are ill. For the next four days I have to go to the doctors office to get a shot of a drug that will boost my white blood count. The hope is I will be at healthy level by next week and continue on with treatments. The lack of a catheter was also a concern today. Even if my blood count had not been below the bottom of the barrel, I am not sure how I would have been given the chemo. The doctor was not in the office today, he was treating patients out of town, so everything I got was translated from the nurses. The new plan for delivering the chemo is through a pic lin...

Just a few updates. We met with the Radiologist yesterday to develop a game plan. It looks like there is brand new research out on the treatment of Hodgkins patients and I might be benefiting from it. Instead of three weeks of radiology, I might only have to do two. Radiology will start one month after Chemo ends, so we are anticipating the end of the year. After meeting with the Radiologist, we headed back to the Oncologist to disconnect the pump. My boss had told me that a nurse in the treatment room was one of the nicest people she has encountered and I got to meet her yesterday. She was very kind. I have to actually say, everyone at that office has been unbelievably kind and caring. I have not felt well for the past two days. I have been taking the anti-nausea medication but do not know if this dose is good for me.  One thing I can say about that medicine for sure; I have become reacquainted with my bed today. I do not believe I have been awake for more than 2 hours today.

It is the close of Day 2. Not going to lie to you all, it has been a rough day. After being awake all night, I finally fell asleep around 6:00 a.m. and Wayne woke me up at 7:00 a.m. I did manage to go to work and facilitated a training this morning.  It all went downhill fast when I got to work. I am not sure what the trigger was, it could have just been breathing, but I got super nauseated. I also believe I was running a fever, my face was red and hot.  I only made it a half day. I came home, took my anti-nausea medication and finally slept for 3 hours.  When I woke up I felt much better. I was expecting to get two good days following the starting of the chemo. I guess I only got one. Overall, I feel zapped, like I have no energry. I am worried. If I feel this poorly after only one day, how in the hell am I going to feel tomorrow. Taking a bath with the catheter in is a nightmare in itself, but bathing while connected to the pump is even worse. Who wou...